I never played Tomb Raider back in the 90s because not a single person I knew had a PlayStation, and the only PC game I knew existed was lemmings.
For some reason, it popped into my head recently and I've played through almost all of it in the past week. Some of the level design rivals the best Zelda dungeons from the 64. I'm thoroughly impressed with most level design here. There's some clever flow to the game that is very rare to see.
It's not at all what I expected from the way the games were advertised in the 90s. I remember all the flagrantly sexualized ads, and they honestly do the game a disservice because it's a slow paced, methodical exploration game with very little action, and what is there is poorly handled. I would have honestly thought it was something more akin to an action run and gun with what I remember of the ads and the few I've seen posted over the years.
I'm glad I played it when I did, now that I'm a bit more patient with games, but I have to say I think it would be a bit better if it was shortened a little. Once you have all the beats down, nothing really changes too terribly much, and most levels start to rely on the "big reveal" when you fall into a new area or something. It's neat, and I know for 96 it's insanely impressive, but it does wear a bit thin considering there's really only a handful of mechanics. Switches, keys (varying flavors), shimmying, and two distances of jump: short with forward+jump, and long with running jump. That does get a little bit dull after a while, but early 3D games often fair far, far worse than this.
Also, I actually like tank controls so I have literally no complaint about the clunkyness, minus the fact that sometimes the game just chooses not to register a jump. I've quick saved before a jump and tested the same run forward and jump and about 1/10 times or so it just doesn't come out which can lead to some annoying deaths. Could be a PC bug (playing tr1main), who knows.
All in all, insanely impressed with it.
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